>>I hope you mean "5% of the people in US jails are innocent".
>>Got any sources?
Mike Williams wrote:
> How could anyone make a serious attempt to calculate that percentage?
>> Presumably what you'd have to do is take a random sample of the people
> in jail, and then determine which of them are actually innocent, and
> which of them are actually guilty. However, this seems to require a
> method of determining guilt that is better than the existing judicial
> system.
I have heard of some law schools that review the cases of death
row inmates, and eventually find exculpatory evidence in many
of them. Not sure of the percentage, but IIRC it was about half.
Given that death sentences are automatically given lots of review,
and they still find this many errors after that, makes me think
that the percentage of errors in cases with "only" a life sentence
is probably even higher.
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/ Lars Poulsen +1-805-569-5277 http://www.beagle-ears.com/lars/
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